St. Jude Athletic Club- Girls Basketball

The St. Jude girls’ basketball teams are open to all girls from the 3rd grade through the 12th grade
and all of these teams play in the Girls Western Athletic Conference (GWAC–www.gwacsports.com).
We can/will form teams at the following levels:

Instructional basketball at the 3rd and 4th grade level means that wins and losses are not recorded
and they play only a five-game regular season. Their regular season begins around 3/9 and ends by
4/14. At the coach’s discretion, these teams can choose to enter up to two tournaments. Practice for
these teams can start as early as the beginning of February (particularly if a coach decides to enter a
February tournament) or later in February if the coach decides to not enter any tournaments, or at
least no tournament that does not begin until March.

Teams in the 5th-8th grades are chosen based upon a tryout process. Tryouts this year will be on Dec.
17th and 18th. The formal tryout policies and procedures are posted on the girls’ basketball portion of
the St. Jude Athletic Association website. The league has changed their alignment and thus no longer
calls the leagues A-B1-B, but I will stick with that terminology here for clarity. The top players make
the ‘A’ team and play in the National Red league (Visi, Victory, Ignatius, and Jude with crossover
games against Dominic, Antoninus, Lourdes and Teresa). The next best set of players make the ‘B1’
team, with extra consideration given to those that are in the younger grade as they are likely to form
the core of the ‘A’ team the following year and will need the year of preparation (and play in the
American Gold league which is composed of the 2nd and 3rd best teams from 7-8 larger schools in the
league). The remaining players are distributed on the ‘B’ teams to create evenly talented ‘B’ teams
(and play in the American Silver league which should be the recreational teams from the 7-8 larger
schools in the league). All of these teams play a 10-game regular season starting the weekend of 2/9
and ending by 4/14. The SJAA will pay the entry fee for up to three tournaments for each team. Fees
for any additional tournaments will need to be funded by the team.

We strive to have experienced non-parent coaches for our ‘A’ and ‘B1’ teams – but that is not always
possible. At this point I have only one of those positions filled, Julie Dalton will coach the 7/8th ‘A’
team. Gym time permitting, the ‘A’ team players will be asked for a larger commitment with respect to
practice time. Our ‘B’ teams and instructional teams typically practice two hours a week. We hope to
have at least three hours a week of practice time for the 5/6 ‘A’ team (and hopefully the ‘B1’ teams),
with likely at least fours a week for the 7/8 ‘A’ team. Until we know the total number of teams we will
have, we cannot say for sure how much gym time will be available. If there are girls that would rather
not put that much time into basketball, they should let us know before tryouts that they are not
seeking a spot on the ‘A’ team.